Franz Josef Glacier History & Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere

The glacier carries two names and a long human story — a Māori legend of grief, a European naming in 1865, and a guiding tradition that continues on the ice today.

Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere — the tears of the maiden

The glacier's Māori name is Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere, "the tears of Hine Hukatere." In the legend told by Ngāi Tahu, Hine Hukatere was a fearless climber who loved the high mountains. She persuaded her lover, Wawe, to climb with her. Wawe was less sure-footed on the peaks. One day an avalanche swept him to his death. Hine Hukatere's grief was overwhelming. Her tears flowed down the mountain and froze, and the glacier is those frozen tears. The Waiho River that runs from the ice is said to carry them still.

Under the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998, the glacier was officially given the dual name Franz Josef Glacier / Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere. Guides on the ice share the story with visitors, and it remains central to how the place is understood.

Julius von Haast and the 1865 naming

The glacier was surveyed and named for European science in 1865 by the geologist Julius von Haast. He named it after Franz Joseph I, the Austro-Hungarian emperor of the day. Haast's expedition began the formal scientific study of the glacier and brought it to wider attention. The European name has stuck alongside the older Māori one that long preceded it.

A century of advance and retreat

The glacier has advanced and retreated many times within recorded memory. Photographs from the 1870s show it far lower in its valley than it stands today. It surged forward in the 1980s and 1990s, drawing crowds to watch the ice grind down the valley, then entered a sustained retreat from around 2008. The 2012 terminal-face collapse was a turning point, ending the era of guided walks that started from the valley floor. Each swing has been carefully measured, and the long-term record now reads clearly as decline.

The guiding tradition

Guided access to the ice at Franz Josef goes back well over a century, and the guiding operation continues today in changed form. Where guides once led visitors up from the valley, they now meet them on the upper ice after a short helicopter flight. The craft is the same — reading the ice, cutting steps, keeping a group safe among crevasses — carried into a new era. To walk the ice with those guides, see the heli-hike among the Franz Josef Glacier tours on the homepage.

A timeline of the glacier's story

Key moments in the human and physical history of the ice, from the legend to the present retreat.